


One Last Conquest

by lunacchiii



Series: Born To Be Blue (Joshua Graham/Courier Six) [2]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Biblical Scripture References (Abrahamic Religions), Character Development, Developing Friendships, Developing Relationship, F/M, Goodbyes, Honest Hearts DLC, Lovers but not really?, Minor Courier/Craig Boone, Minor Courier/Rose of Sharon Cassidy, Mutual Pining, NSFW, Pining, Shameless Smut, Smut, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Very Good Karma Courier
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-04
Updated: 2020-09-04
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:08:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26287738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lunacchiii/pseuds/lunacchiii
Summary: Well, I guess I'm luckier than some folksI've known the thrill of loving youAnd that alone is moreThan I was created for'Cause I was born to be blue- Born To Be Blue, Chet BakerThe danger in Zion Valley has finally been taken care of, and Courier Six prepares to leave for Nevada. She and Joshua Graham spend their last night together in the wilderness. He asks her about her previous partners, much to her dismay, but she gets into all the juicy (and highly questionable) details anyway.Duty calls, and the Courier walks out of Graham's life just as easily as she had entered it, the resurfacing solitude making the two reflect on what's in store for each of their futures.(This is meant to be a direct mini-sequel of what happens after my first Joshua/Courier fic, Stormy Weather, but can mostly be read as a standalone piece as well!)
Relationships: Courier/Joshua Graham, Female Courier/Joshua Graham, Joshua Graham/Original Female Character(s)
Series: Born To Be Blue (Joshua Graham/Courier Six) [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1909990
Kudos: 22





	One Last Conquest

**Author's Note:**

> Hey! I managed to churn out yet another Courier/Joshua Graham fic, this time as a sexy little epilogue thing of what happens after Stormy Weather. I had a lot of fun writing this! (This is mostly meant to be more of a exploration into Rhea's character and past relationships without me actually writing full fics for those lmao)  
> I've been a little apprehensive (and honestly I still kinda am) about clearly labeling their relationship to be love/romantic, because I'm not sure how I feel about Rhea having a committed relationship just yet. Ever since I started playing New Vegas I've always pictured her to be a disaster bisexual who "fucks to survive", but when I met Joshua Graham in the Honest Hearts DLC it's definitely making me rethink some things. Maybe I might leave their fate for the reader to decide if they actually meet again in the future ;-)  
> Enjoy!

It had been one whole week since the Courier had successfully helped Joshua Graham defend Zion Valley from the White Legs. She had done what the tribes had previously deemed impossible—she convinced Graham to spare the enemy’s leader, Salt-Upon-Wounds. There was no doubt that it was one of the most difficult decisions that the ex-Legate had ever made in his life, but in turn, it certainly was a pivotal moment for him. Finally there were no more shackles that tried to latch him back to the grasp of Caesar’s Legion. Finally he could breathe, and maybe this time he could truly heal from his past. He always talked about how he was baptized twice—once in water, and once in flame—but perhaps it was only now that his new life could begin once more, as an ordinary man that only seeks to protect his own tribe from the harsh, unforgiving world.

The growing connection between Graham and the Courier had not gone unnoticed, either. Ever since they had tumbled into bed together a few weeks ago, word spread fast about how Joshua Graham had finally welcomed someone into his personal life after years of solitude.

The tribes were already quite welcoming towards Rhea to begin with. After her encounter with Graham on that one rainy day, however, both the Dead Horses and the Sorrows started to readily greet the Courier with warmer smiles and, occasionally, some teasing giggles from the children. Follows-Chalk kept grinning at Rhea when she approached him the next day to ask him directions to a cave. Even Daniel couldn’t help but let out a genuine chuckle of surprise when Waking Cloud told him the juicy gossip.

Of course, while the tribes’ encouragement and gladness were slightly embarrassing ordeals for both the Burned Man and the Courier, since they haven’t even labeled their little rendezvous as anything official, it certainly was at least a pleasant change in morale from all their dealings with the White Legs.

Rhea had promised to stay behind and help for a little while longer, but at the end of the day she was still a Courier who had the fate of the Mojave in her hands.

 _Just one more week_ , she told herself, tracing her finger around the smooth, round edge of the Platinum Chip. _One more week and we go home._

* * *

On the evening of the Courier’s last full day in Zion Valley, she noticed that Graham had disappeared since that afternoon. She tried asking around the Dead Horses camp, but no one seemed to know where he was.

She scampered into Angel Cave, anxiously looking for any traces or clues that he might have left behind. While searching his work area, she came across a small note on his table. The edges of the paper were rather torn, as if hastily ripped out of a full notebook. It read very simply, almost ominously:

_Courier,_

_Meet me at The Spine tonight._

…

The black waves of nightfall soon washed over the red rocks of Zion Valley. When Rhea finally stepped over flatter ground as she reached the very top of the Spine, the first thing that caught her attention was how large and starry the night sky was. She was so high up and the big void over her head seemed so deep, it felt like she might fall upwards if she stared for too long.

As she switched her gaze of amazement back down to Earth, she saw a large leather tent set up on the ground. Not far from it was smoke emanating from a warm, inviting campfire. There Joshua Graham was, sitting by the fire, cleaning his trusty old pistol. Beside him stood a large pot of something that smelled delicious, and a few bottles of what seems to be…alcohol? Or was it Nuka-Cola?

“There you are. What’s all this?” Rhea yelled out to Graham as she strode up the last rocky incline. He put down his pistol, and stood up to greet her.

“You’re leaving tomorrow, so I wanted to do something special for you. Consider it remuneration, perhaps, for all you’ve done for us,” He said warmly, leaning against a nearby boulder. “That, and I would like to spend some time with you alone before you leave. The people…talk.”

Rhea laughed as she took off her backpack and placed it inside the tent, then walked over to stand next to Graham. “The view here is beautiful,” she marveled, gawking at the darkened panorama of the Zion Valley landscape. When she looked back at Graham, he was holding two bottles of Sunset Sarsaparilla in front of himself.

“Where’d you get this?” Rhea asked, pleasantly surprised, as she took a bottle from Graham’s hands.

“I went looking around in some hidden caches around here. I know how fond you are of these, considering how you kept staring at the last bottle you finished the day before we fought off the White Legs,” he remarked, and watched Rhea laugh some more in reply to his observation as she brought the bottle to her lips.

They sat down together on their bedrolls, nursing their drinks in their hands as they idly talked about what was next in store for them. The Courier was to return to the Mojave, to decide what she was going to do with the Platinum Chip—a decision that Graham didn’t really have much of a strong opinion on; all he asked of her was for her to keep it away from the Legion. Graham himself was to stick with the Dead Horses and keep in contact with Daniel, assisting the tribes if there ever was a need to defend or relocate their homes in the future.

The longer they talked, the more they started to realize that they would probably not be seeing each other for a very long time—if not at all. They’d grown incredibly close in the past months, and it felt quite surreal that, tomorrow, everything would change once more. Their conversation eventually took a solemn turn, and within minutes they had begun to run out of platitudes and pleasantries about their individual futures. They sat there quietly, trying to think of the right things to say to each other to fill the uneasy silence.

“To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven,” Graham declared suddenly, startling Rhea.

“A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;

A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;

A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;

A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;

A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;

A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;

A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.”

Rhea watched Graham’s face as he uttered each word in calm veneration. She knew it was something from the Bible, but she was secretly surprised at how much emotion it seemed to convey—something she didn’t really expect from a text thousands of years old.

“That was nice,” Rhea commented.

“A little excerpt from Ecclesiastes 3. What I meant to say was…if we are to meet in the future—or not, I leave that for God to decide. There will be a time for it, if He wills it. And I trust that He will be kind to the both of us in His own way,” Graham replied, turning to meet the Courier’s jade eyes that shined in the firelight.

Rhea’s lips curled in a warm, genuine smile. This smile was different from the coy, demure ones she forced on her face whenever she needed to gently persuade someone. It also wasn’t the type of grin that sprung on her face whenever she got clean headshots on Legion soldiers. No, this smile was one that only a few people had seen. It was a smile that would only appear when something was able to make Rhea forget about the harsh reality of making a living in an arid wasteland where everything wanted to kill her, and the hardships that she had to endure in the past. This smile was a sliver of hope that she secretly had for a better, kinder reality.

“Okay, okay, let’s talk about something less serious,” The Courier blushed, her face still beaming from their earlier exchange. “So…any thoughts about everyone’s opinion…of us?”

Graham smiled back at her, and their conversation finally picked itself back up with light and mirthfulness once more.

…

“I’m curious, Courier. Tell me about your…conquests,” Graham perks up, his tone still mostly monotonous, but somewhat suggestive of some mischief.

Rhea snorts. “Oh, for—oh, so is that what we’re calling it now?”

“Well, alright, fine. But if this is leading up to some big lecture about how horrible and sinful it is that I’ve slept with practically _everyone_ in the West, I don’t want to hear any of it,” she sarcastically replied.

Well, not entirely sarcastically. There was a small part of her that was afraid of Graham disapproving of her actions, even though she didn’t want to admit it. But why? It was her own sex life, after all. She never had any reason to care about what others thought of the number of people she had bedded. Besides, if she did care whether anybody had something particularly smart to say about her, the Courier could easily threaten them with a few words—or put some warning shots in their foot.

“Hm. And why would you think that?” Graham asked, genuinely intrigued by why her train of thought had gone there.

“Well, I don’t know, you’re a New Canaanite. A pretty devout one, too, and I can respect that. I…I guess I’m still not sure about how you would feel about me,” Rhea admitted shyly, taking off her cowboy hat and running a hand through her raven-black hair. Graham sees the look in her eyes turn wistful as she stared off into the void.

“Rhea, you’ve given me no reason to doubt your character. In fact, in all you have done for the tribes of Zion Valley, you’ve only given us more reason to trust you and your actions,” Graham replied, placing a gentle hand on the Courier’s lap. “I don’t intend to impose anything on you and nitpick how you choose to live your personal life. God is the only one who can truly render his divine judgment, and so far, I’d say He seems to be looking kindly on you.”

Rhea turns to look at Graham, his ice-blue eyes looking back at her almost fondly. She finally cracks a weak little smile, and sighs deeply.

“Thanks. That means a lot,” she replied softly as she propped up her arms behind her and leaned back on them.

“So, hm. Conquests, huh? Let me think for a second…” Rhea trails off in thought.

“Well, hey, this one was interesting: Benny, from New Vegas. He was the guy who shot me in the head.”

Graham’s tender expression suddenly twisted into a look of sheer astonishment.

“Okay, don’t freak out just yet. It was a ploy for…revenge! To steal back the Platinum Chip. Besides, I snapped the little bastard’s neck seconds after he came,” Rhea hastily tried to correct herself.

Graham’s brow raised as he took a sip of his drink. “Could you not have just lured him into his room with the possibility of sex…without it actually happening? That seems to be, well, inconvenient,” he commented, intent in trying to understand Rhea’s rather questionable motives.

“Well…I, uh, ha…” Rhea apprehensively stammered as she tried to think of the right words to say. “Okay, look, I was feeling two things the moment I saw that dumbass in his dumb checkered suit: pure, unbridled rage…and curiosity. Yes, of course, I was furious that he nearly killed me and gave me amnesia! But, well, I was also curious about how interesting my revenge could possibly turn out. So, I…took it as far as my anger would let me.”

“Hm. So you’ve got a pretty ruthless streak to yourself too,” Graham smirked. Rhea rolled her eyes as she took another sip from the amber-colored glass bottle.

“Yes, I do. But only when people really test my limits. So, I’d advise you not to shoot me in the head unless you’re looking to get murdered mid-coitus,” she jested as she gently rested her head on his shoulder.

“Noted,” Graham raised his brows, replying to her warning in a voice laced with sarcasm as he took a long swig of his drink.

They sat like that in total silence for about a minute, until Rhea piped up again, raising her head up from Graham’s shoulder. “Oh yeah, conquests. Um, I guess I’ve been doing Cass on-and-off. Boone, too.”

“Tell me about Cass.”

Rhea smiled as she looked up to the night sky. “Rose of Sharon Cassidy. That was her full name—a mouthful, if you ask me, but I think it fits her. She’s a fiery woman, and I think that’s what I loved about her. We were almost always drunk every time we had sex, but it was still pretty great,” Rhea sighed.

“Love? Are you two together?” Graham asked, turning to look at Rhea with a surprised expression.

“Oh, no, not…really,” Rhea sighed as she looked down at her empty bottle. “I mean, we did click in many ways, but we’ve known and worked together for a good while…and there doesn’t seem to be any sort of progress in our relationship. So, no. We’re not,” Rhea answered, a slight tinge of sadness protruding through her voice.

“Alright…tell me about Boone, then.”

“He’s a former NCR First Recon guy who tagged along with me after I stopped in Novac. He’s the one who taught me everything about long-range, actually,” Rhea remarked, gesturing to her trusty sniper rifle leaning on a nearby rock. “His wife was sold to Legion slavers behind his back because she wasn’t exactly popular around town, and he ended up having to mercy-kill her before she was auctioned off, which messed him up a lot.”

Graham choked on his drink in response to hearing Rhea’s…entanglement with a clearly traumatized man. Rhea furrowed her brows at Graham’s reaction.

“Joshua, let me finish my story,” she grumbled. He sighs, and lets her continue, his brows still furrowed in bewilderment as he watches Rhea explain herself.

“Anyways, we traveled the Mojave together and after some particularly grueling missions together, sex started to become a regular form of…stress-relief. Strictly informal, no feelings involved. Just two…friends…trying to understand each other better, or something like that. And, look, just so we’re clear, this was all on his initiative. I never coerced him into doing anything at all; I even asked him each time if he was sure, and he still insisted.”

“That’s fair, I suppose,” Graham remarked, his mind still processing the Courier and her NCR companion’s strange relationship.

“Yeah. I guess that’s…it, really,” Rhea shrugged nervously, almost as if she wanted to physically worm out of the conversation.

“Is that all? When you said you had sex with everyone in the West, I would assume that would encompass more than three people,” he chortled, wondering why Rhea’s list of potential paramours was so short.

“Well, I mean, these were just…encounters that had at least some meaning behind them. Things worthy of being called ‘conquests’, you know?” Rhea tried to correct herself, doing jazz hands to emphasize the weight of the word ‘conquests’.

“Oh, hah, you know what? I remember one more. Let’s see…” she spoke in a slight sing-song voice, placing her bottle on the ground.

“There was this one man. Really mysterious and intense, but, damn, he was a wicked shot with a pistol,” she continued in a hushed voice, turning to meet Graham’s gaze.

“Tell me about him, then,” Graham asked, curiosity permeating in his voice from newfound interest, eager to know more about whoever this dashing enigma was.

“Well,” Rhea giggled. “I admire and respect him a lot for his skills and his unwavering faith,” she said, moving her face closer to Graham’s. “He’s also got all these bandages around him…”

Graham’s eyes narrowed as he realized that this enigma…was him.

“I think I know this man,” Graham chuckled quietly. Rhea smiled back at him, moving even closer to touch her nose to his bandaged one briefly, before kissing him deeply. He placed his hands on her waist and slowly leaned back into the bedroll as Rhea practically clambers onto him, hanging on to his shoulders while their tongues tangled around each other. He tasted like sugar and herbs, like the Sunset Sarsaparilla they were drinking earlier, and the Courier was intent on savoring every drop of him.

Rhea wraps her arms around Graham’s neck and presses her body tightly onto him as she gently rolled her hips into his, causing him to groan into her mouth. His hands worked to unzip her pants, pulling them down to her knees and exposing her bare ass to the cool night air. Graham gripped and kneaded on the muscles on her hips as Rhea nibbled on his rough lips. Quickly tugging off the bandages around his hand, he reached further down and ran his fingertips along her entrance that was getting wetter by the minute. He started to rub enticingly slow circles on the cleft on her mound directly above her clit, causing Rhea’s breath to quaver. She felt his free arm lock her torso down onto his as he eases two thick fingers inside of her, forcing out a yelp from Rhea. He slowly teased around his fingers to feel each and every crease and ridge, drawing out her whines of pleasure as he went along.

“Fuck, please…more, more,” Rhea pleaded wantonly, making it a request that Graham found it hard not to follow through. He started to pump in and out of her faster, making sure to curl up into that particular patch of muscle at the front of her cunt that made her scrunch her toes. Rhea whimpered into the crook of Graham’s neck as he held down her ankle, firmly planting it down to the ground and continued to push her further and further up into the heights of pleasure. Finally, she let out a string of strained cries as she came, slick gushing out from between her thighs with each jerk of Graham’s hand.

“Should we…” Graham paused to recover momentarily from the fatigue in his arm, “continue this in the tent?”

Rhea huffed heavily as she tried to regain her strength. She looked back at Graham with a dazed expression, her mind still hazy from her earlier orgasm. “What’s wrong? Aren’t we alone right now?” she asked him concernedly, leisurely sitting up to kiss him one more time before unbuttoning her shirt. “Besides, we got rid of the White Legs. Nothing to worry about, hm?”

Graham laughed to himself. _Well, there are probably still some tribal scouts doing their rounds tonight,_ he thought. _But it *is* Rhea’s last night here after all, and she did do a lot for us, so…why not._

Seeing as how she was rather adamant on staying outside, Graham didn’t need more encouragement. “Lie down on your side,” he instructed her in his deep, husky voice, and Rhea complied. She lay down on the bedroll, facing outwards to the starry landscape as she heard Graham unbuckle his belt, followed by sounds of fabric shifting behind her.

Rhea was startled when she felt a rough hand snake in between her inner thighs, grazing her folds slightly.

“Raise up your leg,” Graham whispered in the Courier’s ear, sending shivers down her spine and a million little goosebumps to wash over her honey-tan skin.

_Christ, his fucking voice. It’s going to be the death of me…and I kind of want it to be._

Rhea swallowed hard and did as she was told, despite how weak and gelatinous her legs felt at the moment. The hand that crept in earlier was now firmly wrapped around the back of her knee, helping her prop up her right leg so that it remained elevated. She felt Graham’s bare length start to rub against her folds, coating himself in her slick. Rhea bit down on her lip, trying not to make too much noise as his tip teasingly brushed against her clit. When he let himself in, the sensation of a pleasurable fullness forced out a sated sigh from Rhea, as if he was finally giving her something that she had been craving or missing.

There was something incredibly arousing about getting fucked completely out in the open, mere meters away from the tall drop of the Spine’s cliff. Not to mention, the position that both of them were in was also highly compromising as well. It was almost as if they were inviting everything lurking around in the dark to watch and listen to them…to watch as the fearsome Burned Man thrusted in and out of the illustrious Courier, so-called Savior of the Mojave, as she spread her legs wide open for him; to listen to the noises she made as she showed him how good he felt inside of her.

Graham quickened his pace as the hand on Rhea’s leg moved to grasp around her shapely neck, causing Rhea to cling onto his arm while he continued to pound into her.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck, please…don’t stop, Joshua,” Rhea pleaded as she craned her neck back to look at Graham, her eyes begging for him to give her more of everything he had to offer.

“Rhea…” Graham growled out her name like a sacred prayer as he watched her dark lashes flutter closed, like she was trying to shut out all senses so that the only thing she could feel was her incoming release. It was so close, and it felt so hot and heavy inside of her; it was being accumulated and dragged around in the pit of her stomach with a rope that was about to snap anytime.

As Graham kept thrusting into the Courier, he released his hold on Rhea’s throat and switched his attention to her clit. Wanting to keep up with his advances on her body, Rhea reached down to gently caress his balls as he drove into her.

Being handsy and rough in both their ministrations finally elicited the boost they both needed for the big snap of their shared rope. Rhea swore she saw stars exploding in the night sky as she yelped out loudly, clenching down in pulses onto Graham’s cock. The same went for Graham, too; hypersensitivity seared through his entire body like a foreign type of fire as he released into her while her fingers were still stroking the bottom of his shaft.

…

They lay there on their bedrolls peacefully, staring up into the starry ceiling of the Utah sky, still basking in the weary afterglow of what would be their last night together.

It would have been the most perfect, comfy night that the Courier has ever spent outdoors…save for the dull rumble in her stomach. She did travel all the way up to the rocky peak of the Spine, after all, which was really not the closest distance from the Dead Horses camp.

“Joshua, I hate to disturb your reverie, but do you have anything to eat?” Rhea whispered as she gently elbowed Graham, who looked like he was halfway into drifting into sleep.

“Oh. Yes. I made dinner, actually, but...we got distracted,” he pointed out, making Rhea chuckle in her realization. “I’ll bring you a bowl.”

* * *

By the time the sun started to rise over the horizon, painting the once onyx sky a sublime shade of peach-orange, the Courier and Joshua Graham were now back at the Dead Horses camp. Rhea was busy hugging everyone goodbye and receiving gifts of food for the long road ahead. Follows-Chalk, Waking Cloud and Daniel were the last people she bid her farewells to, before she packed everything up and hiked over to the entrance of the Southern Passage with Graham.

Roughly an hour later, the two of them were standing silently in front of the tunnel that would take Rhea back to the Mojave.

“Well, um, this is it, huh?” The Courier cleared her throat awkwardly, trying to mentally brace herself for how emotional leaving Zion Valley might turn out to be.

“Rhea, wait.”

Graham pulled the Courier in for a hug, followed by a chaste kiss. Rhea was a little alarmed about the display of affection in broad daylight, but seconds later, she eventually relaxes herself in his hold as she wholeheartedly kissed him back.

She then felt something metallic being pushed into her hand, and looked down to see a familiar .45 pistol with a unique snakeskin-patterned grip.

“Joshua, I can’t take this—"

“A Light in Darkness,” Graham retorted calmly, firmly clasping his hand over the pistol in her hands. “It is a personal gift, from me to you. I want you to have it. You will need it more than I do, considering what you will be facing in the near future.”

Rhea bit the inside of her lip to keep herself from tearing up. _Don’t cry, don’t you dare fucking cry, you stupid idiot,_ she internally screamed at herself. Tossing her previous apprehension about public displays of affection out the window, she threw her arms around Graham one last time. “Thank you,” she whispered in his ear as she hugged him tightly.

“Safe travels. God keep you, Rhea,” he smiled.

“And you, Joshua,” the Courier replied to him softly, before she turned around to walk into the shadowy entrance of the Southern Passage back to Nevada. “I’ll see you around sometime.”


End file.
